I made friends with the instituteur of the Villeneuve public school, who led the singing at church, and kept the village book-store; and he too talked politics with me, and told me that all elections were held on Sunday, when the people were at leisure, for otherwise they would not take the time to vote. He was not so clear as to why they were always held in church, but that is the fact; and sometimes the sacred character of the place is not enough to suppress boisterous party feeling, though it certainly helps to control it.
After divine service on election Sunday I went to the Croix Blanche for my coffee, to pass the time till the voting should begin. On the church door was posted a printed summons to the electors, and on the café billiard tables I found ballots of the different parties scattered. Gendarmes had also distributed them about in the church pews; they were enclosed in envelops, which were voted sealed. On a table before the pulpit the ballot-box—a glass urn—was placed; and beside it sat the judges of election, with lists of the registered voters. But in any precinct of the canton an elector who could prove that he had not voted at home might deposit his ballot in any other. The church bell rang for the people to assemble, and the voting began and ended in perfect quiet. But I could not witness an election of this ancient republic, where Freedom was so many centuries old, without strong emotion; it had from its nature and the place the consecration of a religious rite.
III
The church itself was old—almost as old as Swiss freedom, and older than the freedom of the Vaud. The Gothic interior, which had once, no doubt, been idolatrously frescoed and furnished with statues, was now naked and coldly Protestant; one window, partly stained, let in a little colored light to mix with the wintry day that struck through the others. The pulpit was in the centre of the church, and the clerk's desk diagonally across from it. The floor was boarded over, but a chill struck through from the stones below, and the people seemed to shiver through the service that preceded the election. When the pasteur mounted the pulpit they listened faithfully, but when the clerk led the psalm they vented their suffering in the most dreadful groaning that ever passed for singing outside of one of our country churches.
It was all very like home, and yet unlike it, for there is much more government in Switzerland than with us, and much less play of individuality. In small communes, for example, like Villeneuve, there are features of practical socialism, which have existed apparently from the earliest times. Certain things are held in common, as mountain pasturage and the forests, from which each family has a provision of fuel. These and other possessions of the commune are "confided to the public faith," and trespass is punished with signal severity. The trees are felled under government inspection, and the woods are never cut off wholesale. When a tree is chopped down a tree is planted, and the floods that ravage Italy from the mountains denuded of their forests are unknown to the wiser Swiss. Throughout Switzerland the State insures against fire, and inflicts penalties for neglect and carelessness from which fires may result. Education is compulsory, and there is a rigid military service, and a show of public force everywhere which is quite unknown to our unneighbored, easy-going republic. I should say, upon the whole, that the likeness was more in social than in political things, strange as that may appear. There seemed to be much the same freedom among young people, and democratic institutions had produced a kindred type of manners in both countries. But I will not be very confident about all this, for I might easily be mistaken. The Swiss make their social distinctions as we do; and in Geneva and Lausanne I understood that a more than American exclusivism prevailed in families that held themselves to be peculiarly good, and believed themselves very old.
Our excursions into society at Villeneuve were confined to a single tea at the pasteur's, where we went with mademoiselle one evening. He lived in a certain Villa Garibaldi, which had belonged to an Italian refugee, now long repatriated, and which stood at the foot of the nearest mountain. To reach the front door we passed through the vineyard to the back of the house, where a huge dog leaped the length of his chain at us, and a maid let us in. The pasteur, in a coat of unclerical cut, and his wife, in black silk, received us in the parlor, which was heated by a handsome porcelain stove, and simply furnished, much like such a room at home. Madame P——, who was musical, played a tempestuously representative composition called "L'Orage" on the upright piano, and joined from time to time in her husband's talk about Swiss affairs, which I have already allowed the reader to profit by. They offered us tea, wine, grapes, and cake, and we came away at eleven, lighted home through the vineyards by Louis, the farm boy, with his lantern.
